If winning was a culture, surely Ricky Ponting could have brought it to the current Australia team © AFP

Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing
- Vincent Lombardi

As much as I love cricket, I can't bring myself to sift through the entire contents of the Argus report. I'll take the soft option and look to someone else to do the hard yards and provide a synopsis of the most important bits. From what I've read, it sounds like some Australia cricketers stand accused of doing just that at times during these last few years. There's a lot of talk about ‘team culture’ etc. and I must confess that I'm genuinely unsure as to where I sit on this sort of management-speak jargon. I've heard the term bandied about increasingly, a hand-me-down from the corporate world no doubt but how relevant is it to this conversation about Australian cricket?

The old-fashioned cynic in me leans towards dismissing any serious analysis of the whole team culture thing. In some respects, it's an easy excuse for covering up the most basic cricketing fact of all - the team that scores the most runs and takes the most wickets generally wins. If you look back to the so-called strong team culture that pervaded the Mark Taylor/Steve Waugh/Ricky Ponting era from the mid 1990s through to about 2009, they had some fabulous cricketers. With players with those egos inhabiting the same dressing room, you could be forgiven for wondering if that was a fertile ground for a negative team culture. Yet, reading the autobiographies and listening to interviews from that era of Australian cricketer, the universal theme that comes through is one of a strong team ethic and a powerful culture that bound these strong, proud, sometimes arrogant men together. So what's changed? Winning! Well, not winning.

It's amazing how the simple act of winning or losing cannibalises itself. In order to win regularly, you need great players. Australia had that in spades during that 15-year period. No wonder they were nigh indomitable. Sure, they enjoyed a strong team culture but it's the age-old question - which came first; chicken or egg?

A few of those same players are still in this current team. Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Michael Hussey, Brett Lee, Shane Watson. As intelligent men, they could have surely brought that culture of winning with them into this squad. Except of course that it's hard to create a winning culture when ... when ... um ... um ... when you're not winning.

Look, it's a complex issue and there are a million text books and management bestsellers out there that espouse the value of organisational culture. I do not doubt for one moment that there is immense value in understanding and fostering that theory. In sport though, it's sometimes too easy to revert to corporate analogies that obfuscate the blindingly obvious - if you have the cattle to win trophies, you magically seem to have a good culture and when you start losing a few series, that culture soon turns sour (apparently). Sometimes it can be the difference between a great catch, a lucky snick through the slip cordon or losing an important toss. Do we really need a report that took 6 months to write to tell us what we already know? Australian cricket had a wonderful halcyon period; eventually that had to come to an end. India took over the reins briefly and England have now come into their cycle of ascendancy. Think of Ian Bell's horror Ashes series in 2005? Has he just grown up and become a far better batsman or has the winning culture of the England dressing room suddenly given him a talent infusion that would otherwise have been lying dormant?

Think back to the great West Indian era of the late 1970s through to the mid 1990s. Their team culture was apparently awesome to behold and their high-five celebrations became the symbol of that domination. High-fiving is now the way all cricketers celebrate; from even the youngest juniors through to the oldest park cricketers, it is one of the great legacies that Clive Lloyd and his calypso men left behind (some jazz-hat cricket in England remains thankfully resistant). As soon as they started to lose their mojo, even the players who were part of that great culture were suddenly victims of the complete opposite. Richie Richardson, Courtney Walsh and Carl Hooper saw both sides of the coin and they probably didn't become toxic overnight. They just stopped winning as often. And then some management guru analysed them to death.

Why is it so hard to accept that winning and losing is a cyclical thing? Always has been; always will be. Yes, I do believe that in time to come India will dominate the game for increasingly longer periods but that's purely down to the fact that they have a huge population of cricket-mad people who by virtue of sheer numbers will swamp the other cricketing nations. But even India will go through patches of mediocrity, even with all-time greats in the team. If you look at it from a pure numbers perspective, the latest injuries to the Indian bowling attack shouldn't really have had that much of an impact. With the depth that they should have in the country, there really should be a dozen Zaheer Khans and Harbhajan Singhs waiting to come through the system. Fact is that they've lost a few Test matches, barely a few months after they won a World Cup, no less. So what do we make of their culture now? Is it world champion stuff or 4-0 loss territory?

Australian cricket can analyse itself to distraction but I can't see it making that much of a difference to be honest. There might be a few areas that can be improved and modified but unless the Cricket Australia management are prepared to be as harsh on themselves as they are on non-performing players, the Argus Report may achieve very little. That is the romance of sport. If we knew that one team would continue to win forever purely because of culture, cricket would be a boring, soulless place. Fortunately, it remains a place of dreams, of bad luck, of heroism, of improbable chance, of inexplicable umpiring and of sheer unadulterated talent that even the best systems in the world simply cannot produce from even the most comprehensive reports. Players like Sachin Tendulkar and to a lesser extent Shane Warne are living proof of that. They defy organisational culture and team ethos and even their own foibles (in Warne's case). Some things are just a gift from the gods and will forever be thus. No analysis required please.

The Argus report reminds me of the old joke about culture, applicable to any race that you wish to have a friendly jibe at. I've been sledged with it and I've used it on myself in moments of self-deprecation. "What's the difference between yogurt and XYZ nationality? Yogurt's got more culture." Similarly, what's at the heart of the Australian cricket team's so-called ‘poor culture’? Having just won a series in Sri Lanka, maybe they've suddenly got a great culture. Or maybe they just batted, bowled and fielded better. Didn't need 6 months and a few hundred pages to tell you that!

Alastair Cook is understated and classy © Getty Images

Irony. One of the most underrated pleasures. Best savoured slowly and with none of the joy and exhilaration that comes with winning or triumphalism. It's almost bitter-sweet in flavour because it brings with it no great sense of personal achievement or patriotic fervour; just a wry smile and a shake of the head.

Irony is spread thick on British toast this Sunday morning. In a week which Andrew Strauss described as not being one of England's finest hours (with reference to the riots), the much-maligned English cricket system of the last 20 years finally brought the throne back to the birthplace of the game. On one hand we have a staid, traditional, somewhat old-fashioned country (in the nicest possible way I might add) showing off an ugly modern face that looked so incongruous among the iconic tourist sights of London. Barely a few days later we saw a slick, ruthless and thoroughly modern cricket team, even down to the style of clothing they now wear on the field, polish off a tired but formidable (on paper) Indian batting team that boasts many of the modern greats.

There is nothing old-fashioned or traditional about this England team, even down to the Irishman in the middle order and the various other players whose heritage can be traced back to the four corners of the globe but who are now as proudly British as you like. No sense of disenfranchised youths among this lot! And all of this in an old British city (Birmingham) that is now as famous for its Indian balti restaurants as anything else. Ironic indeed.

For India, the gentle fall to earth was predictable but surely it must hurt a little bit to relinquish the No. 1 ranking so meekly. Okay, it is clear that Test cricket is not necessarily at the top of the BCCI's priorities and that is their prerogative. India have earned the right to prioritise their own goals and who would begrudge them that privilege? They are the World Champions in the shorter format, their innovative economy has reinvented Twenty20 cricket to the extent that everyone is copying their blueprint. The irony I suppose is that for a country that scoffed at Twenty20 cricket when it was first born, it took but one triumph in South Africa a few years ago, when a young MS Dhoni led a team of pups to a world championship, for India to now relegate Test cricket to a definite second, third or even fourth priority. No one at the BCCI will ever admit it but maybe even IPL ranks higher in the pecking order.

India are not the only ones seduced by that mistress - Australia too have proved that despite the rhetoric, IPL contracts are on a par with any sense of national duty. We only have to remember Michael Hussey and Doug Bollinger arriving late for a Test series in India because of commitments with Chennai Super Kings to realise that it would be hypocritical to single out the home nation as the only ones smitten by the IPL's fluttering eyelashes.

It is ironic too that for a country that is widely regarded as the most cricket crazy nation on earth, the longer form of the game has lost its spectator appeal. You would think that for a nation which loves cricket as much as India does, the more cricket the better. To a certain extent that is true but it's not the five-course meal that Indians now love to watch. They have embraced the take-away, fast-food concept and are now exporting it with added spice! Some people would argue that the Indian cricket fan still follows Test cricket as closely as ever but they just don't like watching it at the stadium. Even allowing for some of that, looking from afar, one can't help but feel that the players themselves know that their real stardom lies in the shorter format.

With the retirement of Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar looming, one cannot help but feel that they will take a bit of that five-day magic with them. Virender Sehwag has a magnificent Test record but such is his style that one tends to link him more closely to the shorter game, although his numbers suggest that he's actually a more credentialed Test player than anything else. More irony.

For England, I can only see a fairly extended reign at the top. They will need to find a spinner to replace the excellent Graeme Swann but the rest of their squad looks robust and endurable. Now that Kevin Pietersen's star has waned slightly, they lack the genuine stars that the Australian and Indian dynasties boasted during their reigns but ironically (there's that word again!), that actually makes England a more complete outfit. In Alastair Cook they have a future record-breaking run machine but it is probable that he will creep up silently on greatness in a manner quite unlike Tendulkar, Ponting, Sehwag, Lara et al.

Cook is the quintessential British stereotype in that respect - understated, efficient and classy without feeling the need to convince anyone else. He is unlikely to be the poster boy for junior cricketers in England but for all that anonymity, he might just be the dinosaur that Test cricket, and English cricket, needs to keep the embers burning.

Who will challenge England in the next few years? Just about everybody but I don't think they'll dethrone England for a few years yet. I don't think they will dominate to the extent that the Aussies crushed all before them during their halcyon period but in typical British tradition, they will be efficient and clinical, winning more than they lose in the next half-decade. I rate South Africa as their most likely challenger for no other reason than they have the same efficient work ethic that Andy Flower has managed to instill into this team. The South African domestic system is quite robust and, like county cricket, it doesn't necessarily have to be the best domestic competition in the world to turn out a squad of about 15 players who can take on the world. Mind you, a question for another blog piece might be the issue of which country has the best first-class system. Australia can no longer claim that as its birth-right but who else has the depth to match it?

Not to be particularly jingoistic - I don't really care who sits on the throne - but after watching Britain's youth laying waste to a proud country that I so dearly love from my many years of playing cricket and my days as a student at Oxford, I can only hope that Strauss and his men realise that cricket needs them to rule with a velvet glove not an iron fist. We've seen what can happen when young people feel disenfranchised and ignored by the powerbrokers - regardless of whether we agree with their gripes or not (and frankly, I don't!); cricket too, even Indian cricket, can learn something from that. Rule with grace, mind your manners, innovate with imagination but never forget that the roots of the game still lie in slow-growing soil. The Tendulkars of the world can grace any stage but his pedigree was born of traditional parenting. Watching a slowly unfolding Border/Dravid/Yousuf/Kallis/Warne masterclass in Test cricket is a pleasure that should not just be for the video archives - there's room in cricket for all types of kingdoms.

The King is dead. Long live the King. That's irony.

Dale Steyn leads a clutch of current bowlers seeking greatness © Associated Press

For my birthday, my mother sent me a copy of “Not In My Day, Sir”, a collection of letters on cricket published in Britain's most traditional newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. The book amply bears out the implication of the title, that there is nothing so constant in cricket as the complaints of the middle-aged and elderly that the sport is going to the dogs because it was so much better when they were younger.

Being middle-aged myself, I adhere to this to some extent: I don't care what you say or what statistics you produce about any other player, I'm not going to change my opinion that IVA Richards is the greatest batsman I've seen. And I very much suspect that when I'm an old man I will annoy young whippersnappers now being born by droning on about none of the future's current leg-spinners being a patch on Shane Warne.

But only to that extent.

One of the currently fashionable moans is that there are no good bowlers any more. All the great ones of the last couple of decades have retired and there's no-one to replace them.

Really?

Is Dale Steyn going to end up as South Africa's best-ever fast bowler, or will that title remain with Allan Donald – and if it's still going to be Donald, by what margin?

Have India ever had a better pace bowler than a fit Zaheer Khan?

With the exception of Wasim Akram, which left-arm quicks have been better than Zaheer, who swings both the new and the old ball and was chiefly responsible for the wins which elevated India to the top spot in Test cricket?

What did Michael Holding do that Stuart Broad did not do while taking five for none at Trent Bridge?

Would Suresh Raina or Yuvraj Singh have been any more uncomfortable being worked over by Andy Roberts than they were by Tim Bresnan?

What extra weapons does Chris Tremlett need to be comparable with Joel Garner?

After a winter of success in swingless Australia and a similar performance on the fifth day at Lord's against India, while still retaining the ability to hoop the new ball both ways at 88mph, which England team from any point in history would the 2011 version of James Anderson not walk into? Getting Sachin Tendulkar out seven times in eight matches isn't bad going for someone who isn't top-class, either.

Those of you scurrying to Statsguru to drag up a lot of boring career averages to try and prove that I'm asking very silly questions indeed need not bother commenting unless you have a substantial point to make. Simply showing that fast bowlers who had the chance in the 1980s to bowl on the ultra-fast wickets at Perth or The Oval, on the terror tracks of Headingley or on West Indian pitches as lively as the discos in the stands have better averages than bowlers sentenced to toil away on pitches designed to make sure that corporate guests will have some very dull cricket to watch on the fifth day of a Test is not, to my mind at least, particularly convincing.

Right, the greats I've mentioned did their stuff over a long period – but Zaheer is the only one for whom the end of his career is even a cloud on the horizon, and there's no obvious reason to suppose that the rest are going to get worse over the next few years: Anderson, Bresnan and Broad are visibly better bowlers than they were a year ago.

More promising, perhaps, is the line that the Robertses, Garners and Akrams were pioneers. They showed people what could be done, and the present generation are simply benefiting from their invention. It's certainly true that there are many more bowlers around nowadays who bowl at West Indian quartet velocities: thirty years ago, the only English bowler at that level was Bob Willis on a good day; now almost every county has one. And reverse swing is no longer a Pakistani mystery but a skill which a lot of the best bowlers have to some degree even though the journeymen can't manage it at all. Internationally, apart from those I mentioned earlier, Morne Morkel, Fidel Edwards and Kemar Roach have the pace if not necessarily the skill, and one must presume that there's at least one to be found in the dozens that Australia are picking.

But it's a funny old argument that the game is going to the dogs because there are now a lot more bowlers who bowl like the greats of the 1980s than there were in the 1980s themselves.

Of course only some of the current contenders will have lengthy successful careers. Some will get injured, some will get so far and no further and we will shake our heads wistfully in years to come and mutter phrases about wasted talent. And whether any of the ones who do have long careers will end up on anyone's list of great bowlers, let alone everyone's, we cannot yet know. But I'll bet that some will and that when they have retired in 10 or 15 years time, there will be another wave of people telling us that the era of great players is over. And they will be wrong again, because the supply of great players is never-ending.

The difficult bit, apparently, is spotting them when they are right under our noses.